


Conspiracy of love

by imsfire



Series: Cassian week 2018 prompts [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Cassian doesn't always take proper care of himself, Cassian is not good at feelings, Cold, Feels, Gen, Hoth setting, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Humour, Post-Battle of Scarif, but they're working on it, hunger, hurt/comfort but by subterfuge, mild angst and feels, minor injury, neither is Jyn, so the team help him, using slightly underhand methods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 03:30:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15476709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Cassian gets back tired and angry from a mission that didn't go as well as he'd hoped.  It takes the combined efforts of the rest of the Rogues to get him to see he needs to take better care of himself now he's home.





	Conspiracy of love

**Author's Note:**

> For Day six of Cassian Appreciation week on tumblr: prompt, Conspiracy.  
> Apologies for posting a day late!

The first thing K-2 says when he walks into the Maintenance Bay is “You’re not meant to be here.”

_Ah, krif, what?  Please, not you as well, my friend._

Cassian shovels out a smile from somewhere. “It’s good to see you too, K.”

“It is good to see you also.  You are alive.” K takes a miniature screw-turner from the bench and begins to open up the fittings for his right wrist articulation. “But,” he says “you’ve just returned from a three week deployment behind enemy lines.  You have an untreated gash on your forehead and physical scans indicate you are dehydrated, your blood glucose levels and body temperature are both suboptimal, and you have had inadequate sleep in recent days.  If you are not yet ready to go and sleep, you should go to med-bay and the mess, and get extra clothing from your quarters.”

He really doesn’t want to have this scene again.  “K, please.  I’m fine.  My jacket is warm enough, I’ll be okay.  My blaster got damaged in a fight, I need to check it over.”

He sets it down firmly on the workbench between them.  K’s optics brighten as he stares at it, then over at Cassian. “Did you use it as a club?”

“More or less, yeah…” He sighs.  The last twenty-four hours of the mission are best forgotten.  If he can manage to. “Pass me that small-tools tray, please?”

K-2 slides the tray into the middle of the bench; goes on opening up his own wrist while Cassian yawns and begins to break down the blaster into its separate parts.  It looks as though there’s no internal systems damage, but the barrel is badly distorted and the fittings for the scope have both been sheered right off.  It’s going to take some work.

After a time he notices K is tossing through the tray of tools and pushing them to all sides.  The droid cranks his optics to maximum and peers minutely at the interior of his arm.  “This is disappointing,” he says.

“What is?”

“There is no pincer or set of tweezers of a fine enough gauge in this toolkit.  There’s a foreign body inside my forearm and I cannot reach it with the available tools.”

“A foreign body?” Cassian pushes his stool back.  His feet and his back both hurt when he stands up but he ignores it.

“A small invertebrate.  There’s a literal bug in my arm chassis, Cassian.  And it’s _dead_.” K sounds profoundly disgusted. “I do _not_ want a decomposing organic inside me.”

It isn’t a pleasant thought, Cassian has to agree. “May I look?”

“O, very well.”

He comes round the workbench to K’s side and leans over to peer into the exposed circuitry.  The act of moving provokes an embarrassing yawn. “Sorry…”

“Are you bored already?”

“No.  Just tired.” Cassian dredges up another quick smile. “Just a bit” he adds to pre-empt the inevitable snippy remark.

To no purpose. “You should go to your quarters and rest.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Not gonna happen, K.  Broken blaster, remember?”

“If you did go to your quarters, you could get your lock-pick set.  I know you have three sizes of micro-tweezers in that.”

It’s a fair point.  He can see the curled up corpse of a snow beetle larva in the cavity beside a lubricant conduit.  At the third instar, by the looks of it, he thinks sleepily.  How in the stars did that get in there?  Better get a general warning issued to all the droids on base to watch out for this happening.

But in the meantime, neither he nor K will be able to extract the remains without tweezers, and K is right, he does have them in his lock-pick tools. “Okay.  Good idea, I’ll go get those.”

“I’ll take a look at that blaster for you while you’re gone.” K swipes across the workbench and seizes the weapon in his operative hand.  As Cassian heads out of the door he can hear an incredulous mutter of “Look at the state of this!” and then K asking rhetorically “What did he decide to hit, a star destroyer?”

It was a Gamorrean bodyguard; but Cassian decides not to tell him that just yet.

It’s colder in the corridor and by the time he reaches his quarters he’s on the verge of shivering.  Just as he’s opening his locker for the toolkit his comm pings.

“Cassian, while you’re there, why not put on a warmer coat as well?”

A sigh starts as frustration but fades into kinder feelings.  K-2 can’t help it, he’s programmed that way.  Just the same he can’t resist replying “K, you’re turning into a regular mama-hen, you know that?”

“That is a ridiculous assertion.  And besides, I’m right.  Aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” Cassian says wearily. “You are.”

His parka is right there on the bed.  Laid out neatly.  He doesn’t remember leaving it like that; which must mean, Jyn has been borrowing it while he was away.  She’d left it spread out ready for him, before she came to meet the transport.  A pang at the thought of her face looking for his in the group disembarking; and the thought of her peeping up through the fur of that warm collar.  She’s been wearing his coat.  He picks it up, hoping childishly that it may smell of her now.

It doesn’t; it doesn’t smell of anything, which he knows means it only smells of him.  She’s been wearing his coat and it smells of him. 

Well he just isn’t going to let himself think any more about _that_.

He shrugs it on, and it is blessedly warm.  The bed looks warm too; but K is waiting.  Cassian tucks the lock-picks into a pocket and sets off back to Maintenance.

He’s most of the way back when a familiar voice calls his name from a side passage and he turns and sees Bodhi limping towards him. “Cassian!  Hi!  It’s good - good to see you!”

It’s a bad limp.  He hurries over. “What happened?  Bodhi, are you okay?”

“I made the mistake of asking Jyn f she’d like a little sparring session tonight, and I just hurt my ankle.  Chirrut is teaching me the basics of zama-shiwo and I wanted to try some of that on her.  It’s harder than it looks.”

Bodhi sparred with Jyn; right after their conversation this evening.  Guilt washes over Cassian like a flush of nausea. “Stars, I’m sorry!  She wasn’t holding back…”

“Not your fault,” says Bodhi, blessedly ignorant of how very much it is in fact his fault. “She never does hold back, you know that.  Anyway I’m heading to med-bay to get this strapped.  It’s just taking me a while.  Slow-peg, hobbled-y leg, that’s me tonight!”

“Do you need a hand?” It’s only a few minutes out of his way, and the thought of Bodhi wobbling slowly through these cold passageways is painful.

“Oh Force, yes please!”

“Okay.  Come on, put your arm over my shoulder.  That’s it.  We’ll soon have you there.”

They stump along steadily, Bodhi chatting about everything that’s been going on; not the big picture or the politics, but who got top score in a marksmanship test, who’s started learning aerobatics, who’s dating or fighting, who’s back from mission or off on a new deployment.  It’s the kind of base gossip Cassian often misses, and a feeling of warmth fills him at the thought of all these people still finding ways to live their lives, finding incidental moments of happiness and good luck all around him, even while together they all fight this war.

Bodhi is struggling again by the time they reach the med-bay, despite having assistance.  He must have really bust that ankle.  Cassian helps him inside and into a seat, and a 2-1B glides over with a triage kit.

“How may I assist you, Lt Rook?”

“My right ankle, a – a fall.  And – seeing as you’re here, Cassian, don’t go yet – Doctor, maybe you could take a look at my friend’s head too?”

He’d almost forgotten about the damned head blow. “My? – oh.  Yeah.  I guess it does need to be seen to.”

Now he comes to think of it, it is still throbbing like an old scar in storm weather.  Kriffing Gamorreans.  Still, he’d gotten free, even if he’d had to practically smash his Blas-tech over the brute’s skull to do it.

The med-droid is probing Bodhi’s swollen ankle, making him yelp and curse. “You have a severe sprain, Lieutenant.  It will require an hour’s bacta immersion and a day’s rest, and support strapping.  I will bring you an ice-pack to apply while we wait for the small tank to come free.”

Bodhi swears again. “Jyn really owes me for this.” Cassian starts to chuckle, but breaks off as the 2-1B pushes him into the adjacent chair and begins to examine his forehead. “Please keep still, Captain, while I clean your injury.  I can inform you that it will require at least two sutures.  This will not take long.”

He sits impatiently while the wound is probed, syringed and stitched, and a small bacta patch taped to it.  It hurts enough to keep him awake, despite the relative warmth of the med-bay.   Just as the droid is finishing with him, the doors hiss open and Baze and Chirrut walk in.

Chirrut is beaming. “How is your knee, Bodhi?”

“My ankle,” Bodhi says quickly. “She hit me and I fell and sprained my ankle.”

“But she hit you on the knee.”

Bodhi sighs. “Yeah.  Yeah, she did.”

Cassian can’t help but grin at his expression.  Even after a couple of years of it, Chirrut’s weird perceptiveness still comes as a shock to them all sometimes.

He hauls himself up from the seat as the 2-1B moves away. “Will you be okay now, Bodhi?  I need to get back to Maintenance, K is waiting for me.”

“Ah, we’re all heading the same way,” Chirrut tells him. “We’re going to Maintenance too.”

He’s hanging onto Baze a little more possessively than is normal.  Cassian blinks at them both.

“This one,” Baze says with a sidelong nod “has done something to his echo-locator and I need some tools to open it up.  Walk with us, Captain?”

“Glad to.” He hasn’t seen the two of them for more than a few minutes in several months; their furlough and his never seem to coincide. “Bodhi?”

“Don’t wait up for me, I’ll be forever, I’m in the queue to be dunked.” Bodhi waves them off with a smile.

“So,” Chirrut asks as they head out “did you see Jyn at all since you got back?”

_Well, krif, that was straight to the point._

Baze gives him a wry look over his husband’s head.

He sighs.  Nothing for it. “Yes.  She met the ship and – I dunno.  She had a go at me about – oh, everything, it felt like.  I don’t think I handled it very well.  No, that’s a lie.  I do know - I handled it extremely badly.  I was impatient and mean.”

“And then she got impatient too?”

“Yeah.  Basically.” He sighs again.  He’d been looking forward to getting home, to food and warmth and safety, and spending some time with Jyn, and then he’d been tetchy and snippy at her concern – it had only been concern, he knows that – and she’d looked away and just shut down.  As he should have known she would.  Telling Jyn _I know how to take care of myself, I’ve been doing it for a long time before I even knew you_ really wasn’t a good idea. “I was rude.  I ought to apologise.”

And as if admitting his stupidly doesn’t make him feel bad enough, he yawns again, so widely it hurts his jaw.

It’s beginning to feel like a long day.

They’re passing the main north-south junction, the turning for the mess hall, and a smell of baked grains and cheese sauce wafts past him on a draught.  His stomach rumbles, embarrassingly loud.

Baze sniffs the air, nudges Chirrut. “Smells good, huh?”

“Oh, why do you tease me?  You know how hungry I always am in this cold.”

“Well, come on then.  Let’s get a snack.” Baze steers him sharply to the right, sweeping Cassian before him. “Plenty of time to fix your gadgetry later.  Let’s eat.”

“Guys – guys, let me by –“ Cassian is being herded towards the smell of food and the warmth of the mess.  It’s pretty hard to resist; and he’s just starting to realise he’s being set up here. “Guys, please, K is waiting for me.  Please let me go –“

“K-2SO wouldn’t want you to make an old man starve,” Chirrut says sweetly.

The likelihood is, of course, that K-2 would say tartly _You’re not starving_ ; and that’s exactly what Baze says, before he pushes open the double doors and steers both Chirrut and Cassian into the mess hall.

The smell of food is beyond irresistible, and when Baze says “I think I’ll have a hot drink, just to keep you company – can I get you anything, Captain?” Cassian knows he’s going to cave.  He’s been aching with hunger for the last hour, and the thought of baked grain-shapes and grilled cheese, and a mug of hot tea – and “Okay, I give in.   You’re right, that would be good.”

The mess hall is one of the few genuinely hot places in the whole of Echo Base, thanks in part to the adjacent kitchens and in part to always being busy and crowded.  Sitting at a bench, sandwiched between his companions (preventing him from leaving, he notices; oh yes, this is a set-up), Cassian accepts a plate of food, a mug to warm his hands.  It’s the last of the three things K-2 told him he ought to do; warmer clothes, medical attention, and food and drink.  K, and before him Jyn.  He feels ashamed.  And hungry.  He eats.

Somehow his tea is refilled while he’s ploughing through the plateful of good hot food (and it’s a fresh-greens day, so that the usual filling stodge of grain-shapes and sauce is supplemented with a generous serving of crisp sautéed sprouts and pickled Bothan spinach, and it’s really delicious).  He can’t leave his seat, the Jedhans have him pinned, indeed he’s practically squashed against Baze’s warm bulk.  He could practically lean against the bigger man and just take a snooze right there.

He wonders whether he should ask whose plan it was to physically push him into the mess.  But it’s paid off.  And, krif it, now he feels better he can see that they were right; and he was utterly broken-headedly wrong.

The hot tea is good, the food was good, his friends are good.  Good people, better than him.  He doesn’t deserve – doesn’t deserve…

Doesn’t…

He wakes up with a snort and a jolt, and he’s no longer napping against Baze’s broad shoulder; no longer in the mess hall at all.  His head is resting against a hard durasteel surface, and two equally hard arms are holding him under the knees and shoulders like a child.  Krif.  He really did fall asleep.

“K-2?  Stars, K, what the? –“

They’re moving steadily down a familiar corridor. “Nearly there,” K-2 says briskly. “Keep still, I may drop you.”

“K, I’m sorry, I was on my way to you, I got the tweezers but Baze and Chirrut – but –“

“You were distracted.”

“Yeah.” And they were right to do it.  But still that doesn’t alter the fact he’d promised  to come back to the Maintenance Bay and then he didn’t. “I’m really sorry, K.”

“Not to worry.  Everything is sorted out now. Jyn lent me some tweezers and we fixed my dead creepy-crawly - which is her term by the way since as I observed it was neither creeping nor crawling any longer – and we fixed your blaster as well.  And oh look, here we are at your quarters and here she is too.”

“Put me down, please, K.”

“Oh, if you insist.”

The droid sets him on the floor like an awkward puppy.  He looks at Jyn.  She looks at him.  Then past him.

“Did he eat?” she asks K.

“Yes.  That malodourous stuff you humans like.  Mac-and-cheese.  And vegetable matter.”

Jyn smiles faintly.  He sees her eyes flick to the stitches on his temple.

He’d like to say _I know what you did there_ ; but it seems unfair to lead with that, when the only thing he really needs to say is “I’m sorry.  You were right.”

“We wouldn’t need to play stupid games like this if you were less stubborn about taking proper care of yourself.”

Trust Jyn to tell it plain.  But he deserves that, so he bows his head and accepts it. “I know.  I’m sorry.  And I’ve missed you and I appreciate everything you do for me.  Even down to stupid games.”

“I don’t think it was a stupid game,” says K. “Smash-ball is a stupid game.  This game had a practical purpose.  Are you going to go to sleep now, Cassian, or do I have to carry you around some more?  You seemed to find it very soothing.”

“I’m going to go to sleep now, K.  Thank you for taking care of me.”

“You’re welcome.  I did avoid the main public areas, by the way.  So only approximately 50 Alliance personnel saw you being carried.”

 _Krif_.  “I appreciate it.” What else can he say?  _Only 50_ is a lot better than all 5000-odd…

“Goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight, K,” Jyn calls after the droid. “And thank you!”

As K vanishes down the corridor Cassian asks “Was Bodhi in on it too?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“So his ankle is perfectly alright, after all that?  Did you slice the 2-1B or bribe him?”

“Uh, neither,” Jyn says, and the confidence goes out of her eyes. “Bodhi really did ask if I wanted to spar.  I told him it wasn’t a good idea because I wanted to hit someone, and I told him what had just happened and he said some very rude things about how daft you were being, and asked if he could help.  We agreed we’d have a little play-fight and I’d whack his knee for verisimilitude, but then he skidded and went flying, and - yeah.  His ankle.  Fuck, it isn’t broken, is it?”

“Just a sprain.  And was K’s bug just verisimilitude too?”

“I could slap that droid sometimes, I couldn’t believe it when he commed me and said he’d put a real live creepy-crawly inside his own bloody chassis.  Who does that?  He’s so kriffing weird sometimes.”

She reaches for the entry keypad and then hesitates, about to enter his codes.  Which he did teach her, so she has every right to know them.  It hurts to see her unsure of him, of them, once again, and to know it’s his own dumb fault.

Cassian says “Jyn, I am so sorry, I don’t know what the hells I was thinking of, the way I snapped at you before.  I apologise.”

He lays his hand over hers.  Somehow they both press the numbers, and he isn’t quite sure how but the code is right and the door unlocks and opens.  Jyn leads him inside.

He remembers how the parka was laid out neatly on his bed, waiting for him to come home.  Remembers that image of her beautiful face surrounded by the fur collar.

“Sometimes when you ball me out you’re right,” she says quietly.

“Not this time.  I was tired and stressed and I had a fight with a Gamorrean yesterday but I had no business taking it out on you.  I am really so, so sorry.” He makes a move towards her, cautious, hopeful; she bits her lower lip for a moment before stepping in to him and holding up her arms. 

“Hold me,” she murmurs. “Hold me, please.  That’s what I should have said when you came off the ship.  Not _what the hells have you done to yourself this time?_   I’m sorry, Cassian, I was really in your face.  I miss you so much when you’re away and It frightens me when you come home looking so battered and worn-out.”

They’re wrapped around one another, bending in close, pressed together, and her last words are muffled in the thick fabric of his coat.  Cassian buries his face in the warmth of her and the scent of her hair.

“I missed you, too,” he says. “I miss you every day when I’m away, I miss talking to you and knowing you’re around, I miss seeing you wearing my coat and seeing you smile and I’m sorry I was such a little shit today.  I love you, Jyn.  Thank you for getting the guys to push some sense into me.”

“I am sorry about all that, too.  Are you honestly sure you’re okay with it?  It felt a bit like we were some kind of conspiracy to lure you back here…”

Back here.  Back to his own quiet quarters, with the heating vent opened fully, and an extra blanket on the bed, and Jyn holding him tight.  It’s all he wanted, all the way home it was all he wanted.  He was cold and hungry and in pain, and now he has a belly full of food and a bacta patch and two stitches on his head, and he wants to lie down in a warm bed with his lover and sleep.

He tells her so.

They lie down.  Then sit up to pull boots off.

It’s what they should have been doing two hours ago, if they hadn’t both been too tired and worried not to scratch each other up the wrong way. 

Maybe it will be a few years yet before they can be certain of not hurting the other, certain of not scratching those sore old wounds, certain of not falling into the old defensive behaviour learned from years of solitude.  But they’re working on it.  Every day, every month, every mission.

And this mission is over.  Cassian lies back and closes his eyes, and turns his head into the scent of Jyn’s hair, the warmth of her arms.  And sleeps.


End file.
